Romney Campaign Alleges Potential Voter Fraud in Virginia; Requests Investigation

A request to investigate voter-registration forms in Virginia has been issued by Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. (Photo : Reuters)

A request to investigate voter-registration forms in Virginia has been issued by Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.

The Romney campaign has asked Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli to launch an investigation after claims arose that the voter-registration forms have been addressed to deceased, children, family pets, and other individuals ineligible to vote.

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The registration forms have been sent by Voter Participation Center, a non-profit organization in Washington. According to claims, the center has been mass-mailing the forms to dominant Democratic-leaning demographics such as African Americans, Hispanics, young adults, and unmarried women.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on how the forms have cause problems for local election officials who have been investigating on the legitimacy of the registration forms.

"I don't know what this center is, and maybe they think they're doing a good thing," said Chesterfield County Registrar Lawrence C. Haake II to the Times-Dispatch, whose office received 30 more of the forms last week. "But they're not."

The Virginia Board of Elections has received more than 100 complaints from residents and state registrars about the voter-registration forms.

"It is clear that hundreds, if not thousands, of applications were delivered to those ineligible to vote," said Virginia's Board of Elections Secretary Donald Palmer.

According to the state's Board of Election's Deputy Secretary Justin Reimer, forms were sent to an 8-month-old child several months after the infant's death, a non-citizen, and to a mother who passed away in 1988 and never lived in Virginia.

The Voter Participation Center issued a statement on their website stating, "Conservative activists have tried to discredit the work of voter registration groups...by raising false and groundless claims about fraud."

The Voter Participation Center's Founder and President Page Gardner called the Romney campaign's request for an investigation as, "blatant and ongoing partisan effort to keep people from voting."

"We see it everywhere -voter purges in Florida, Texas and Colorado; onerous voter ID laws, which Pennsylvania State GOP House Leader Mike Turzai recently admitted serve no purpose other than to elect Republicans. We will fight these efforts to disenfranchise voters in Virginia and in every other state," added Gardner.